


Prized Most Highly

by daphnerunning



Series: What is Wrought Between Us [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cousin Incest, M/M, Secret Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27619867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daphnerunning/pseuds/daphnerunning
Summary: If this is all it is, let it be this. If this time is all we have, let us have this time.On a hill overlooking Tirion, they plight their troth, the one Oath that brings Maedhros something other than pain through a long and tormented life.
Relationships: Fingon | Findekáno/Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: What is Wrought Between Us [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019358
Comments: 20
Kudos: 77





	Prized Most Highly

Eru loved the elves, and loved their songs.

The _and_ was important, Findekáno thought. He did not love the elves for their songs. He did not love the elves only when they sang for him. He did not listen most to the songs that were most beautiful, though Findekáno privately thought that perhaps this part was true, though Manwë and Ingwë would have him believe otherwise.

Surely, if Eru were like an elf, he would be like Fëanor, Findekáno thought sometimes. The fire of creation burned in that one’s eyes, his father often exclaimed, and turned his eyes away, proud and humbled at once to be the younger brother of such a one. If Eru were like Fëanor, he would be proud, and he would have a favorite of his creations. Odd, Findekáno mused, watching a lock of wavy copper escape its tail.

Eru loved the elves, _and_ he loved their songs.

Maitimo paused in his rhythmic work, just long enough to tuck that errant strand of hair back into its tail, a rueful look on his face along with a smudge of soot, just over one eyebrow. “You said you would play.”

Findekáno strummed the small harp in his lap, waking his fingers, feeling indolently at his ease. The forge of Fëanor was always kept burning hot, and the heat soaked into his muscles, soothing and relaxing him after a long month of training with Turukáno. “Are you self-conscious?”

“I? Of what?”

Findekáno started to pluck out a melody, fingers finding the familiar strains of a song he’d written years earlier, whose inspiration was currently standing tall and proud with a smudge of soot on his face. “Nelyafinwë, firstborn son of Fëanor, is known for his skill with the sword,” he said, neutral amusement in his voice.

Maitimo huffed out a breath through his nose, then turned back to the forge, tongs gripped in one of those strong, sure hands. Findekáno’s fingers ached to touch them. “I would be a poor son of Fëanor, firstborn or no, if this much were beyond me.”

He brought down the hammer, with careful taps rather than the resounding blows Findekáno had rather been expecting. Then again, it was no greatsword that Maitimo crafted--or attempted to craft. Findekáno still wasn’t sure if Maitimo actually knew what he was doing, or if he was simply showing off, taking advantage of all the things Findekáno still didn’t know. “When do I get to see it?”

“When I finish it. Or perhaps, when you finish playing me a song.”

“The heat in here is warping my strings.”

The fires of the forge danced in Maitimo’s eyes, making them spark the color of his hair, earning the gleaming copper of his nickname. “Perhaps my cousin is the one who’s self-conscious of his skills.”

“Put a bow in my hand instead,” Findekáno complained, but started to play in slightly more earnest, humming the descant as his fingers tickled the strings.

Mostly, he watched the muscles in Maitimo’s shoulders bunch, then swell with effort, making him look like a large elf rather than simply a tall one. Findekáno liked thinking of him that way. Fëanor always seemed too-large, as if simply walking near him, one might trip on a hole his great strides left behind. Maitimo wasn’t like that.

Findekáno didn’t think Maitimo was like that at all.

“You have an odd look on your face. It suits you ill.”

Findekáno strummed, distracted from his song, and gave half a smile. “Thoughts, Maitimo.”

“Ah! You have those sometimes, too?”

“It’s good that I love you and your swordplay, and your fledgeling skills at the forge, cousin. Your humor is hardly worth observing.”

Maitimo’s eyes glinted. “And my swordplay? Surely, you should say _for_ my swordplay. Though I am unsure I would use the word ‘play’ along with ‘sword,’ the way I prefer to strike.”

“Mmn, no. Do you love me for my harp?”

“Bold, to assume--no, I do not love you for your harp.”

“You love my harp.”

“Aye, I take your point. Tell me of your odd thought.”

The heat crept into Findekáno’s cheeks. The heat only, he was certain. “That if I had sired a one such as you, it would not be a rock of light I prized most highly of my creations.”

Maitimo’s hammer stilled, a foreign look on that familiar, handsome face. His lips twitched, and with an effort of will, he turned back to his task. “You are a strange one, Findekáno. I let you watch me forge--in exchange for a song I have _not_ received--and you dream about being my father.”

“I did claim the thought an odd one,” Findekáno muttered, somewhat defensively, which made Maitimo laugh. “It isn’t of the relation I was thinking, anyway. Merely the prizing.”

The hammer came down again, careful taps that belied the strength Findekáno knew accompanied every strike. Whatever he was working on, this mysterious project that had stolen him away from their hunting trips for three weeks in a row--inexcusable!--must have been near completion. Maitimo’s eyes looked red in the glow of the forge, a dark and burnished beauty only highlighted by the flames playing on his hair, tied firmly back from his face with a leather thong. No simple tie could bind _all_ of that copper, though, and strands curled and peeled away from his queue, framing his face in a way that made Findekáno hum to himself, once again finding poetry in the movement of his own fingers. “When will you finish your task?”

“I’ve made up my mind not to finish until I receive my payment,” Maitimo said, and drew himself up to his full height, giving Findekáno such a stern look that for a moment, Findekáno could only see Fëanor, haughty and brilliant, and not the cousin he cherished. Maitimo was a high prince, too, he remembered with a qualm. Maitimo he might be, but he was also Nelyafinwë as much as he was Russandol, as much Fëanor’s possession as his mother’s beloved child, as much a creature of forge and fire as he was of song and peace.

Still, he refused chagrin. With a smile, he finally bent to his tune, beginning a lay of the Telequendi he’d learned from a traveler, a story of mist and magic in the time before the Trees, of meetings and misfortune. The song meandered through times of laughter, and watching sweat runnels streak down Maitimo’s handsome, soot-darkened face broken by lines of amusement, spurred Findekáno on. He invented verses, not wanting the smile to fade from Maitimo’s face.

That was why he was here, after all. He may be no help in a forge, but he could bring some light to the dark place. If he did not wield the hammer and tongs himself, he could perhaps bring cheer to the one that refused to walk away from his father’s domain.

And, he admitted to himself, rounding the volte of the final chorus, he was here, in a too-hot forge when he could have been shooting or riding or climbing or drinking with his siblings or other cousins, because he would rather be with Maitimo in a place he didn’t understand, than surrounded with those who thought him endlessly charming and clever where Maitimo was not.

 _If that is all it is, let it be that,_ he thought, and cherished the thought as he cherished their moments together. He was not blessed with foresight as some of his kin, but needed such a gift little to know the long peace would not last forever. _If this time is all we have, let us have this time._

The song lasted while Maitimo drew the steel, shaped it, quenched it in oil, then continued to grind and file. As he judged whether the fullers were true, he began to hum, a harmony to Findekáno’s song, their voices mingling as Laurelin gave way to Telperion outside.

“You have luck with your timing,” Maitimo observed, and pushed the escaping hair back from his face with the back of one hand, tugging off his heavy work gloves. His fingers were long and graceful, though Findekáno privately thought they looked far better around the hilt of a sword than in the crafting of one. “As you finish your song, so too I finish my day’s labors.”

Findekáno loosened the strings of his harp at once, sitting upright. “I demand to see,” he declared.

Maitimo laughed, though not unkindly. “You may demand all you wish, I intended you to see from the first I charted my designs. See, you must. But accept...that is up to you.”

For the first time Findekáno could remember, he realized Maitimo was nervous. That thought was a shock. Maitimo was his eldest cousin, eldest of all the house of Finwë in their generation, and always gave off an impression of being impenetrable, as far as Findekáno was concerned. He was brilliant, skilled, thoughtful, kind, and implacable. In all things, he was heir to Fëanor, they said, and every head turned as he passed, the sunset lighting in his hair, whispering that the seed of the first kings was strong and enduring. _Would that mine could glitter like that someday_ , Findekáno thought dreamily.

Maitimo was looking at him, wavering in a most un-Fëanorian fashion. The thought, of Maitimo’s mighty father looking so uncertain, tugged at Findekáno’s heart. As long as Maitimo still looked like that sometimes, he wouldn’t be lost to pride and the love of his own skill. “Must I accept before you show me?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. “Is it a new weapon, that I will be obliged to use in place of my bow and spear?”

Maitimo hesitated, and looked around the forge. “Not here,” he said, and put on his coat. He wrapped the object he’d made in leather, then stood on tiptoes to reach a small pouch on the highest shelf--a shelf that frankly, Findekáno thought must be for Maitimo alone, for who else would bother putting something up so high?

Mysterious pouch tucked into another pocket of his coat, Maitimo nodded decisively. “Good. Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

Sometimes, when Maitimo touched him innocently, a brush of the shoulders or a teasing tug of his hair, Findekáno felt himself burn so intently he wondered if Manwë could see him from leagues away. Maitimo brushed past him, and Findekáno could have traced the outline of exactly where his coat had touched Findekáno’s arm, all the places upon both of them that had ever touched. He numbered them too few, but kept that thought private.

Silver light frosted the hills of Formenos. In the distance, Findekáno could see the valley of Tirion, stretching towards the sea, Telperion’s silver light glittering off the diamond dust of the streets leading to the Great Square.

Maitimo led him up the slopes of Taniquetil. Findekáno took three steps for every two of Maitimo’s, but refused to fall behind, and sang while they walked. Maitimo sometimes sang with him, sometimes walked and listened, other times walked and watched the lights dust the nearby hills. Findekáno sang of legends they knew, of the dark times, of the distant shores they’d never seen, and of the Valar, and of the valiant chaining of Melkor, for what he hoped would be the final time.

On an outlook, overlooking Túna and the vastness of the sea, Maitimo stopped them, and Findekáno ceased his song. Then Maitimo drew the leather-wrapped package from inside his coat, and unwrapped it, revealing a razor-sharp dagger the length of Findekáno’s forearm. “You are troublesome,” his cousin told him, and his mouth fell open.

“I? Why?”

“Because you forced me to come up with something to forge.” Maitimo stepped close to him, and brushed a strand of hair back from his face. Findekáno memorized the touch at once, added it to his catalogue of _places Maitimo has touched me_ , felt the contact burn through him like a firebrand. “What I’ve been working on, I could hardly have you see. So, you are troublesome.”

Findekáno felt color rise in his cheeks. “If you keep secrets that keep us apart, it is _you_ that are troublesome,” he countered. “I do not love you for your secrets, Maitimo.”

One russet eyebrow quirked on that handsome face. “Yet you love me,” Maitimo countered, recalling their earlier conversation. “ _And_ you love my secrets.”

“Your secrets, I’m not so certain.”

“You will. Or...you may.”

Again, uncertainty took hold of Maitimo. Long fingers clenched into a fist, then forcibly relaxed, but Findekáno saw the tension between those powerful shoulders. Then he gave Findekáno a rueful smile, and said lightly, “At worst, we will continue as we have, or you will never speak to me again. I suppose I can always will myself to the halls of Mandos, if this doesn’t work, and stay there until the world changes and even you forget how embarrassing this may be.”

Maitimo, embarrassed? In front of _him_? Findekáno gaped, as Maitimo pulled out the small pouch he’d stashed away, and upended it into one palm, for all the world as if he’d cast his nerves off the side of the mountain itself.

Then Findekáno’s eyes focused on the palm of Maitimo’s hand, and his heart stopped beating.

Two silver rings, beautifully wrought, with delicate engravings of patterns so intricate he could hardly make them out, lay on the palm of his hand. He looked up into Maitimo’s face, and knew his silence had been feared.

“I do not love you for your harp,” Maitimo said softly. “But I do love you. I do not love you for your bow, or your hair, or your gentle heart, or your humor, or your passion, Finno. I love them, _and_ I love you. I...”

He swallowed, and looked down at his hand, as though the rings were a stranger to him as well as Findekáno. “I have seen my father love, and in this, I want to surpass him. I want to love you as you are, not for what I think I could make of you, or for your properties. You are valiant and brave, wise and kind. I would plight my troth to you, until the world is remade, and all things change.”

Findekáno swallowed. He could, he thought, hear Maitimo’s heart beating. Or perhaps that was his own heart, marking out seconds between Telperion’s flowers uncurling. “If this is all it is,” he said, voicing his earlier plea to the heavens aloud, “let it be this. Whatever I have of you, let me have it.”

The look on Maitimo’s face broke Findekáno’s heart. Careful, hardly daring to hope, eager and on the verge of heartbreak. “Is that...do you want to? I know, we’re close of kin, and our fathers may not love the idea, but--“

“Your father,” Findekáno announced, taking one of the rings from Maitimo’s outstretched palm and sliding it onto his finger before Maitimo could stop him, “always does exactly as he likes. My father is ruled by compassion and justice. If either of them gainsay us, let them look to their own failings first.”

It fit perfectly. Everything Maitimo did was perfect. The delicately wrought silver felt warm against his skin, as if Maitimo’s heart beat against it.

A soft joy--a golden happiness, more suited to Laurelin’s shining fruits than Telperion’s subtle gilding--suffused Maitimo’s lovely features, as if he had received what he’d only dreamed of, instead of giving Findekáno what he could have never imagined. He slid the remaining ring onto his own finger, and took Findekáno’s hands in his, squeezing. “In the name of Eru Illuvatar,” he said, quiet and unafraid, “I would marry you. What is your will?”

“My will,” Findekáno answered, with no fear on his face or in his heart, “is like your will. As I think you knew, or why would you bring two rings?”

“Findekáno, you’re supposed to say it properly.”

“I’ll say it properly at the feast,” Findekáno promised, and leaned up, as Maitimo leaned down, and he added _lips against lips_ to his catalogue of all the places Maitimo had touched him.


End file.
